Sony A7 III – A Camera Review – Part 1

I’ve had the camera for about a week. I went out today to get some first impressions. The first thing I notice is the difference between the A7S and the A7 III is the autofocus. It’s night and day. I used center point AF. Whatever I pointed at was instantaneously in perfect focus. No hunting, no off-focus just dead on crystal clear. Now granted, this is in bright day light. But if you’ve ever shot the A7S you know that even under these conditions the photo had a more than even chance of being at least slightly out of focus. I took it as standard operating procedure that magnified manual focus was absolutely necessary for guaranteed perfect focus. Of course, think of what that means for a moving subject. It meant you couldn’t get the shot. So, the A7 III is a revelation.

The next thing I noticed was how convenient it was to have the viewfinder stay in magnified mode after autofocusing a view. Now I can make sure that if the scene is ultra-crowded with competing focus targets that the right one was selected. Or if something has moved I can re-focus without having to re-engage the magnify steps. This is especially nice for macro work or distant objects.

The next thing was an item I noticed while inspecting the images on the computer. The 24-mp files are amazingly croppable. This contrasts with the 12-mp A7S files. I’ve attached an extreme crop of a flower. The focus was excellent and the crop has tons of detail.

And finally, looking at the images on the computer they seem to have a very nice look to them. Of course, the A7S produced nice files too but these look very rich.

These are just my first thoughts. Later on I’ll review the various functions on the camera and how they work or don’t work for my shooting needs. But right now I have to say that except for extreme low light or star photography I can’t imagine using the A7S instead of the A7 III.

2 thoughts on “Sony A7 III – A Camera Review – Part 1”

I’m still learning the camera. Since my previous cameras are from a much later Sony generation than your A7S, the A7III won’t be quite the revelation to me that it will to you. Even so, it’s becoming clear that the A7III is something special.

Just for a fun fact, got to Amazon and try to buy one. The cameras are on backorder for “one to two” months. Ditto B&H, not even shown on Adorama for some reason.

This from Camera News, “The Sony a7 III is a full frame mirrorless camera announced on February 27th, 2018, due to high demand of Sony a7 III camera, a7 III is in short supply, pre-orders far exceed company’s forecast, the availability of Sony a7 III is very low, it will be out of stock for weeks.”

Here’s a sample photo, I’ll try 3 embed formats, see if one works. I managed to embed one picture here a few months back but never managed it again.

[url=[/img][/url][url=https://flic.kr/p/26mLKx1]DSC00179[/url] by [url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomd77/]Tom[/url], on Flickr

Tom:
That’s sharp as a tack. But I’m jealous that you have hibiscus blooming while we’re barely starting on daffodils. In fact at the beginning of this week I still had snow in the yard and frost on my windshield in the morning.

I’m not surprised it’s sold out. It’s a compelling package of features at a semi-reasonable price. But I’m bitter at Sony for taking this long. I am a vindictive man so I blame them for tempting me with the A-850. Maybe if the A7 III continues to make me happy I’ll forgive them but my Sicilian blood cries out for vengeance.

I’ve got some instructions on photo embedding somewhere and I’ll go look it up. Man, look at those colors. Excellent.

Fixed it! I took the address that ended with jpeg and cut and pasted it to a separate line.